Abdo Khal

Okaz

I have written repeatedly about our commercial banks not shouldering their social responsibilities. There is no harm in revisiting the same subject with the hope that they would listen and care this time.



Every year we read and hear about the banks making huge profits reaching billions of riyals. These profits have come from various investment activities. However, a large portion of them, reaching hundreds or sometimes billions of riyals are our own money.



How can this claim be verified? I will tell you how.



Many people who are keen not to commit the sin of accepting usury deposit their funds in current accounts in the banks. They do not take interest on them.



The amount of interest will snowball in the banks, which will look at them as their own profits while in fact they are not. They are the assets of the investors and depositors who are determined never to take interest on their deposits.



The depositors leave these huge amounts of money with the banks who consider them their own profits and are usually reluctant to give them out for charity or helping poor people.



In fact a lot of the money the banks claim to be theirs belongs to depositors who do not take interest on their deposits. Therefore they are not the banks’ profits as they claim every year.



The depositors in this case have the right to reclaim these funds. For them, this is their legal right and not just a humble request. The depositors will not be begging or imploring when they ask for the interest.



The concerned authorities in the Kingdom should monitor the funds and investments in the banks whose owners do not obtain any interest on their deposits.



The banks are putting their hands on these funds turning them into liquid cash and considering them their profits.



The banks are confiscating  a huge amount of money that they did not sweat to collect.



The funds, which the banks have unlawfully obtained, could have been used to establish factories to employ the jobless young Saudi men and women or train them for the labor market.



It is not reasonable or logical that these huge funds are turned into profits without the banks using them to shoulder their social responsibility or repay people who have made these immense deposits.



We do not want the banks to pay us a single riyal from their own money. We only want them to give us back the money they have stolen from us without any justification.



If the concerned authorities in the Kingdom were able to regain the money that the banks have illegally taken from us, they will be putting their hands on billions of riyals.



If we have a billion riyals every year we will get rid of the unemployment, which is breaking the backs of our young men and women.



Paradoxically, the banks are using these deposits to extend loans to us and thus strangle us for many years.



The banks are really milking us. They use our deposits on which we do not take interest to give us loans with heavy interest. They are virtually sucking our blood without blinking or feeling any guilt.